Playing for Keeps
by kyrilu
Summary: The oldest game. Doctor/Master & The-Year-That-Never-Was.


Title: **Playing For Keeps**  
Author: kyrilu/Endless-chan  
Fandom: Doctor Who  
Rating: PG; nothing triggering. Just a boatload of angst.  
Words: ~900  
Characters/Pairings: 10!Doctor/Simm!Master  
Summary: The oldest game. Doctor/Master & the Year-That-Never-Was.  
A/N: The little competition that the Doctor and the Master play belongs to Neil Gaiman, credit to the Sandman. Here's a small fic that I rushed through real fast ever since the idea has been nagging at me so hard and I don't want to forget it.

* * *

This is the days of the _Valiant _and the Year-That-Never-Was. The Doctor and the Master are drawn to each other at nights, together in a way that is instinctive - the last of an extinct species trying to hold on to the tilt of a planet that is not theirs. One pushing, one pulling, and both clinging tightly onto the other as the Earth's axis whirls in chaos.

The Doctor is the prisoner and the Master is his captor. In another universe, the roles might be reversed, but there and everywhere else, when there is still two out of billions billions billions dead, they are there. Nights.

"I challenge," the Master says one evening, as they lay sprawled on the soft carpet of his bedroom. He's drinking red wine, even though human alcohol doesn't affect any of their metabolisms' unless a significant amount is ingested; the Doctor is just staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.

"What are you talking about?" The Doctor lowers his gaze from above, that dazed expression heavy on his face.

"A game, Doctor. Don't you remember?"

The Master smiles and stands, and spreads out his hands palms-up. The world seems to dim around them as he does the gesture - and it's not just electric lights, it's also the stars and the moon from outside the airship window.

The Doctor's eyes widens. He hauls his body up, staring straight at the Master, and says, "Yeah. I know." He looks so shabby these days, a slouch in his shoulders, wearing clothes that had been given to an aged-up body. Not his old pinstripes and converse affair any more. Just a grey turtleneck and loose dress trousers and only socks on his feet.

This is a game, and the Doctor usually likes games. Yet this time, he regards the Master warily, tiredly. "I accept," he says, voice low and careful.

"I am your host," the Master begins softly, "so I am to choose our playing field. I choose the Butterfly Room."

Flowers.

He smells it first, floral and sweet, as the feel of the TARDIS' presence rushes back to him. But this isn't the TARDIS. This is a paradox machine _wrong wrong wrong_and the Doctor trembles at the fragile unbalance hanging in the air.

A butterfly alights on his shoulder. And the Doctor touches wings and powder brushes off, fine like sand, and the butterfly takes off in shaky flight.

The Master throws the Doctor a side-eyed glance. "Home sweet home, isn't it?"

All the Doctor does is shake his head. "I haven't been in this room for years," he replies. He thinks of curly blond hair and a Victorian costume and the smell of cigarettes. And before that, far before that: two Time Lords, young and innocent in a way that he can't even define, not any more.

"Who should begin?" the Master asks. "Oh!" He claps his hands in the illusion of childish glee. "I know. Choose a letter between alpha and omega. Whoever picks the one closest to the one the TARDIS will randomly generate-" the Timelord pauses to watch as the lights on the side panels flick green, "-wins."

"Fine," the Doctor says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Gamma."

"I choose theta," the Master says, and he receives the desired result: pain, flashing quick and blazing in the Doctor's eyes. He watches the Doctor, head tilted sideways, before he finally goes to press his palm into the ivy on the walls. "Looks like I was the closest. Sigma."

The Doctor scowls. "Stop it."

"Oh fine," the Master placates. "If you wish. But I'll start. I am a missile, nuclear-carrying, explosion-bursting."

_red hot light at the tips of his fingers fire-_

"I am a ship," the Doctor says, balancing himself out and slipping easily into the flow of the game. The TARDIS hums underneath the layers of flowers, and despite the ugly red pulsing energy he feels, he knows her and he loves her: his pride and his joy and his constant companion. "Missile-dodging and bigger on the inside."

"I am a tornado. Wind-inducing, ship-throwing."

_he never was any good at flying the TARDIS - the roar of a storm flickering in his ears_

But he grins and counters, "I am a human: life-persistent, tornado-surviving."

The Master scoffs, a scornful bitter sound that twists through the leaves and the petals and the stems. "I am a Dalek. Metal-headed." His dark eyes bore into the Doctor's. "Species-killing."

_EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE-_

"Gallifrey," the Doctor chokes out. "I am Gallifrey. Duty-bound and self-sacrificing."

(the scent of red grass burning)

And the Master _laughs_. Laughs in mad delight, and in this Butterfly Room, he seems to blur over into a little boy looking into the Vortex & a man with a long dark beard & a man with green eyes & a dead dead dead thing & a stolen corpse & a man in long flowing robes (or is it a snake?) & an old scientist & now now now with brown hair and a black suit and he calls himself Harry Saxon & Prime Minister, and again, like always: the Master.

"I am Space," the Master says finally.

_Gallifrey-swallowing_, he does not say. _ Existence-erasing_. But they both know what he means.

"I am Time," the Doctor says in a strange quiet voice. And they stand there, on equal ground and equal footing, holding pieces that only Time Lords can play, still not flinching.

Then Time and Space collide and the Doctor and the Master feel themselves being pulled from each other, called to distances afar - one by the heart and one by the drums - but they are still there that night. They stay.

And in the end, perhaps a young man in a bowtie will ask a dark-haired stranger who won, that last time around. He will claim he won; but so will the first. And then it will start again.

Another game.

* * *

_Sleep,_

_sleep._

_We are together always_

_We are together always_

_There never was a time_

_when this_

_was not so._

-From the short story "Lullaby", by Leslie Marmon Silko.


End file.
